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<title>you look into the void (and know no one is coming) by Garecc, Gunpowderdtim (Garecc)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908226">you look into the void (and know no one is coming)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Garecc'>Garecc</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Gunpowderdtim'>Gunpowderdtim (Garecc)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ready, Aim, Fire [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mechanisms (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amnesia, Angst, Banishment, Being Foresaken, Brian dies in the end, Canonical Character Death, Despair, Gen, Hypothermia, Inevitable Deaths, Loneliness, Moral Dilemmas, Morality, Necromancy, Necromanric Medical Procedures, Outer Space, Spaceships, Technology, Unethical Medicine, but only debatably, failing machines, losing hope, not permadeth but before he's mechanized, slow deaths, space, thats the major death tag</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:13:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,266</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908226</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Garecc, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Gunpowderdtim</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Brian, before he was ever the drumbot is stranded in space. Alone. No one is coming for him and no one is looking. He is out of fuel and he knows without a doubt he is going to die.</p><p>aka</p><p>In which Still Flesh Brian dies.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ready, Aim, Fire [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799860</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>you look into the void (and know no one is coming)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26582386">you look into the void (but someone pulls you back and holds you close)</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Garecc">Garecc</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Gunpowderdtim">Gunpowderdtim (Garecc)</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Beta'd by the amazing @neela-chan on tumblr aka Blue_Rive here</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The pilot’s chair was old and tattered beneath him. Battered from years of use that had clearly occurred, but that Brian still had no memory of. </p><p>Would never have memory of.</p><p>Brian sat, eyes fixed somewhere in the deep abyss in which he found himself.</p><p>In the endless void that stretched empty for lightyears around him, an endless expanse with only frozen space dust for company. It was entirely empty, devoid of any life other than him.</p><p>Devoid of a soul other than his own.</p><p>The stars swirled in the distance, bright specks against what Brian knows to be the unforgiving void that would consume him with no hesitation. </p><p>Taunting him. A goal he had failed to reach. </p><p>They were distant worlds he’ll never see, continents and oceans he’d never glimpse, distant stars he’ll never feel the warmth of, distant people he’ll never meet.</p><p>He was alone out here. </p><p>He would never reach a new planet, never find a new home.</p><p>He had long since disabled the screaming alarms of the failing systems, long since ripped out the wires making them blare.</p><p>So now there was only deafening silence.</p><p>Only silence, the beat of his heart, and the constant, ever blinking warning lights on the console.</p><p>They flashed in tune with his shuddering breaths.</p><p>He was going to die here.</p><p>The oxygen generator was on its last legs, making a rattling sound only just muffled by the wall between them. Every so often he mustered the energy to walk back to look at it again. Because maybe, just maybe, this time he’ll figure out what's wrong. Maybe this time he’ll be able to fix it. Maybe this time.</p><p>He never manages.</p><p>The manual is still in a language he’s sure he knew once but is useless to him now. </p><p>The letters taunt him, so different from the ones he knows now, achingly familiar but when he grasps at the memories they fall through his fingers like sand in a sieve.</p><p> </p><p>He spends hours staring at the useless paper. Begging himself to just remember. </p><p>He never does.</p><p> </p><p>The fuel tanks had run empty weeks ago. </p><p>He still remembers the choking sound the engine made as it finally sputtered and died. The wheezing cough as it stopped whirring him onward. As it stopped propelling him towards what would hopefully be a new life. A new start. A new something. </p><p> </p><p>Only to choke and die mid flight, and condemn him to a slow death in the void.</p><p> </p><p>The denial and pointless hope ran out as the engines died. He had to face the reality of the situation he was in. He was stranded in space. He was alone out here. His ship was dead. He wasn't ever going to make it to another planet.</p><p> </p><p>God knows how he’d managed the first time. </p><p>His memories of everything before that point were blurry and intangible, half known thoughts and emotions. The sense that there was something there, something he could grasp just out of reach but could never quite reach. Letters he recognized but no longer knew, faces blurred just beyond recognition.</p><p>But the landing was still seared into his brain. </p><p>The panic as he tried with nothing but muscle memory to steady the ship, to bring it down slowly. The half known memories of how to guide his breaking and shuddering ship through the atmosphere. The hull rattled and roared as he landed the craft he could scarcely remember on the planet that would become his home. </p><p> </p><p>He doesn't recall where he came from, or where he’d been headed, the memories as blank as everything else about him. But he had been on a planet, and he had known he was a doctor. A good doctor, one who could save these people, so he’d set to work and <em> he did. </em></p><p> </p><p><em> Even if they were dead. </em> It was still medicine, it was just science and metal and electricity, and it <em> wasn't against God. </em>Why would God have given him hands if they were not to heal? Why would he be capable if it were not God’s will? Why would he be capable if it were not right?</p><p> </p><p>If only they could have understood the technology that he himself could hardly explain. If only they understood. If only they had known. (If only he had remembered.)</p><p> </p><p>He was lucky he had spent any time at all trying to fix the ship he had crashed onto that planet on, he would already be dead by now if he had not.</p><p>Whenever he had looked at the machine for too long his head would spin, and he <em> couldn't remember why. </em> He knew the ship, he knew the pieces but trying to piece everything together was similar to trying to remember everything from <em> before. </em></p><p> </p><p>Navigation had simply ceased to function not long after the engines gave out. The holographic star maps had flickered before blinking dead. No explanation, and no amount of trying to fix it has yielded anything other than sparks and error messages.</p><p> </p><p>The cosmos stretched outward endlessly in infinite directions. And he had no idea where he was. No idea where he was drifting.</p><p>He looked out across the expanse of limitless stars and worlds ahead of him, no way to recognize the distant star clusters to position himself, no fuel to even pick a direction and sail, no way to ever land on a planet again.</p><p> </p><p>He knew he would never make it to a new world. Never again feel the light of a sun on his skin. Never again rest his feet on soil. Never again rise from the ashes of a prior life.</p><p> </p><p>He was going nowhere. Adrift. Lost. Alone.</p><p> </p><p>He may as well have already been dead.</p><p> </p><p>He had tried so hard to help them all, tried so hard to be good, tried so hard to save them.</p><p>And saving lives had ended with him here.</p><p>Alone.</p><p>Lost.</p><p>He was going to die here.</p><p>It had all crumbled so fast. So quickly. </p><p> </p><p>He had saved that priest's life (The man’s daughter had begged him. And Brian could never have said no to her sobbing pleas. Could never have turned his back. The end of him living, of sparing that girl her grief justified the actions of him being resurrected, it had to.) and Brian could not bring himself to regret it. (the smile on her face as she hugged him after he relented, as she thanked him thanked him thanked him. He was saving her father. He was saving a person.) No matter that it had ended with him here, he could not regret it. He <em> refused </em>to regret it. </p><p> </p><p>He had saved a life. That justified the fact the man hated his technology, hated everything Brian was doing, hated that Brian could do it, and hated that it was even possible. </p><p>The Priest believed the dead should stay dead, and the living alive. That crossing that line was blasphemous and horrid.</p><p>But Brian had brought him back anyway. Despite all of that, Brian restarted his heart and brought him back to the living.</p><p>The fact he was alive justified breaking the man’s ideals. Because he was alive. Because his daughter was happy. </p><p>It had to.</p><p> </p><p>Life support’s status flashed a foreboding orange-yellow every few seconds.</p><p> </p><p>A constant reminder of the timer on his life.</p><p>A constant reminder that when —because it was a when, at this point. No hope of an if could save him— life support gives out, he will die, no amount of hope or prayer will save him.</p><p> </p><p>Brian took another slow breath, sitting up for the first time in hours as a small beeping alarm sounded.</p><p>He took a sip of his water, washing away how parched he had been before. </p><p>Time to try the comms again.</p><p>He slowly reached his hand to the comms again. Turning the machine on. Like everything else important, it had begun making an ominous clicking sound in the weeks or months he’s been out here. </p><p>Brian exhaled slowly, and as he did every four hours, began flipping between channels and repeating an SOS signal. </p><p> </p><p>He had long since given up on anyone coming.</p><p> </p><p>The comms only gave static, only gave feedback that hurt his ears worse than the screaming alarms ever did.</p><p> </p><p>It hurt his heart, too. After all, it meant no one was out there. </p><p> </p><p>And of course, he’s the only one in here.</p><p> </p><p>There was not a single soul within a lightyear of him. Within ten, or twenty of this ship. </p><p>There was no one coming for him. Not one even looking.</p><p> </p><p>There was not a single soul in the universe that cared for him. </p><p> </p><p>He doubted there was a single person who would <em> want </em> to rescue him, regardless. He doesn't recall who he is beyond what he hopes is his name and the scattered half known memory of who he is and what he does. </p><p>No one had come looking for him in the years he spent on that planet. No one had ever tried to find him.</p><p> </p><p>He had been forsaken before this, and forsaken he is again. There is no one who loves him. No one who holds affection towards him.</p><p>Everyone who he ever tried to love or help has rejected him.</p><p> </p><p>There is no one coming for him, and there is no one who misses him. </p><p>He is forsaken and abandoned, thrown back into space from whence he came. </p><p>He is alone. Truly and endlessly alone. </p><p> </p><p>He doesn't know how long he stares blankly out into the void, doesn't know how long he spends not really thinking, but only existing </p><p> </p><p>Only existing.</p><p> </p><p>He jolted back to reality as a new alarm blared, not his comms alarm, but one just as loud and obnoxious and panicked as the engine’s alarm had been.</p><p> </p><p>He whirled towards the console, already knowing what he was going to see. </p><p> </p><p>Life support was flashing a dead and final red. </p><p> </p><p>Brain stared at the steadily flashing red light and slowly took a sip of water.</p><p> </p><p>That was it, then.</p><p>He was a dead man breathing.</p><p>With no one to mourn him, and no one looking. No one to miss him, and no one to miss.</p><p>He is alone in the universe.</p><p>No one was going to come.</p><p> </p><p>It's a slow thing, the void creeping in.</p><p>Brian drew a blanket over his shoulders and curled up in the pilot’s seat. </p><p> </p><p>The first place he remembers, and the last place he’ll be. </p><p>For a moment he finds humor in it, but it is quickly washed away by the fact he’s going to die here.</p><p> </p><p>As the temperature of his ship steadily drops, Brian knows he is going to die.</p><p> </p><p>But knowing the inevitable didn't stop the tears running down his cheeks as the acceptance slowly crept in.</p><p> </p><p>As he lost what final bit of hope he still had.</p><p>It was an upsetting realization, knowing that despite everything, he had still been clinging to some form of hope that a ship would pass by and save him.</p><p>That the impossible would happen.</p><p>That he would live.</p><p> </p><p>Brian didn’t want to die.</p><p>Didn't want his last words to be unknown. </p><p>So it was with hands shaking from the cold and the fear he turned on the comms and quietly said a final SOS. A final plea for someone to save him.</p><p>“I don't want to die.” He ended it. His final words. “I don't want to die.” A shout into the empty void. A scream into the nothing. A final plea to the uncaring universe for someone would save him so that he wouldn't die here.</p><p> </p><p>He didn't want to die here. </p><p>
  <em> He didn't want to die here. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>As the void crept in, his tears froze against his cheeks. Glimmering crystals against his skin.</p><p> </p><p>As the void crept in, he curled tighter around his blanket. Clinging to any semblance of warmth he ever may have felt. </p><p> </p><p>He was so tired. He’d been out here for so long, he’d been alone for so long. </p><p>He rested his head in his arms, his eyes slipping shut. </p><p>No one was coming for him.</p><p>No one in the universe cared for him.</p><p>No one in the universe loved him.</p><p>The void’s chill took him into a deathly sleep as he stopped shivering, as his body froze, as his heart slowed but didn't stop. </p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>(And a ship that we all know to be Aurora had received the final SOS, the plea of a dying man begging to live. And a certain vampire took that as permission enough to save him.)</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em> There was a man both good and true </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All alone and a-lowly </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Branded a witch for what he could do </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lost in the cosmos lonely </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> They took him and threw him into the sky </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All alone and a-lowly </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Whence he came and where he would die </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lost in the cosmos lonely </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> In the cold of space his eyes did bleed </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All alone and a-lowly </em>
</p><p>
  <em> With crystals glimm'ring his body did freeze </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lost in the cosmos lonely </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Slowly, slowly frost crept through </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All alone and a-lowly </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Stopping his blood as on he flew </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lost in the cosmos lonely </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Sinews fixed for ever more </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All alone and a-lowly </em>
</p><p>
  <em> His bones encased in a screaming form </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lost in the cosmos lonely </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> At last his heart, its beating slowed </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All alone and a-lowly </em>
</p><p>
  <em> But it did not cease, his tale was not o’er </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lost in the cosmos lonely </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Metal-bound his heart beats still </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All alone and a-lowly </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He's not for heaven nor yet for hell </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lost in the cosmos lonely </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you ever project your wierd religion thoughts onto Brian? I do</p></blockquote></div></div>
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